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BWA - Burrows-Wheeler Aligner

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BWA is a software package for mapping low-divergent sequences against a large reference genome, such as the human genome. It consists of three algorithms: BWA-backtrack, BWA-SW and BWA-MEM. The first algorithm is designed for Illumina sequence reads up to 100bp, while the rest two for longer sequences ranged from 70bp to 1Mbp. BWA-MEM and BWA-SW share similar features such as long-read support and split alignment, but BWA-MEM, which is the latest, is generally recommended for high-quality queries as it is faster and more accurate. BWA-MEM also has better performance than BWA-backtrack for 70-100bp Illumina reads.

SW Documentation:

To run this software interactively in a Linux environment run the commands:

module load bwa
bwa

For each of the BWA algorithms, you must first index the genome with the following command:

bwa index [options] input.fasta

BWA programs may also be submitted to a queue using PBS script such as the one below: